#########
#
#####
######
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#####
....
##
#
# #
#
# # #
#
# #
#
##
#####
#
#
#
#
#
#
#####
#
#
#
#
######
Phonological Programming Language
....
Dr. Frank Roberts Brandon
Version 4.2.1
18 December 1991
Copyright (c) 1983,1991
-*- Dedication -*"To the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen."
(Romans 16:27)
1.0 General Introduction
This section describes the conditions on distribution, support
of the language, history, objectives and implementation, and gives a
script for a quick start in using Fonol.
Online, you can look in the table of contents (TOC) by typing
?/toc.
1.1 Fonol Distribution
Fonol is distributed with my blessings. You may give away
copies to your heart's content so long as you do not charge for the
copies and so long as you give all the distribution files in
unmodified form.
1.2 Fonol Support
I intend to support Fonol as much as is possible with a spare
time project and I welcome your bug reports and suggestions for
improvements. When sending in bug reports, please give all the details
of what happened including the matrix and rules you were trying to
run. The transcription and batch file features will help in this (i.e.
send a diskette with a batch file to set up the problem if it is at
all complex). If you have the source code, please don't fix things
yourself -- let me centralize the versions, OK? I also welcome any
help on the documentation so as to make sure that it is clear.
Positive reinforcement is naturally also welcome!
My current address is:
Frank R. Brandon
3937 Anewby Way
Fort Worth, TX 76133-6860
(817) 294-0239.
Thanks to Wayne Redenbarger of Ohio State and Dave Edmondson
of Texas Christian University, I can also be reached at:
brandon@gamma.is.tcu.edu
brandon@tcucvms.bitnet
1.3 Porting Fonol
Porting to other machines that run Pascal or C, especially
Turbo Pascal, should be fairly transparent since I wrote Fonol as
generically as possible. I developed this version of Fonol on an AT&T
6300 using Turbo Pascal 4.0, a version of Pascal that has incorporated
many of the low level conveniences of C.
1.4 Fonol Objectives
Fonol is a programming language that simulates phonological
rules of the sort described in Chomsky and Halle 'Sound Pattern of
English' or Schane 'Generative Phonology'. It also incorporates the
input and output filters (conditions) which came into common use about
the same time. These filters are currently restricted to the
identification of a pattern and two actions: preventing the successful
application of a specific rule or blocking (starring) the entire
derivation. Some standard conventions on rule application are
supported. Cycles of several types are allowed for and other means of
appropriate control are also provided. Further extensions, variations,
and deviations are included from later phonological folklore. (Let me
know if there is something truly vital missing -- I'll try to add it
if I can.)
Fonol is designed to provide a way of writing phonological
rules and viewing their effects. It is intended to aid students of
phonology to grasp the ideas behind phonological rules and to help
phonologists manage large complex bodies of rules in the theory of
their choice. Considering how many competing theories and partial
theories of phonology exist, it may fail in the second case, even
though I would like to accommodate as many theoretical variations as
possible. Since an attempt will be made to provide for all theories,
those who use more restrictive theories will simply have to avoid
using some features of the Fonol language. In any case, it should be
useful for students and in beginning work on undescribed phonological
systems. In some cases, Fonol will allow for the same effects as
theoretical systems it does not directly support. In this case, try
using what is provided and fixing up or beautifying your rules when
you put them in paper form. A program written for the IBMs character
oriented display is not able to directly print the typographically
complex forms of phonological rules, anyway.
Computer simulation of phonological rules helps to advance the
broad generative program as well, in that no amount of hand-waving on
the part of the rule writer or good will on the part of the rule
reader will have any effect on the way the software interprets what is
written. In this sense, it forces the clarification of our ideas just
as the whole explicit rule writing approach was meant to, only without
any generosity in assumptions. In the 'wins-no-friends' department, it
also has been beneficial in revealing how many 'radically new' ideas
are reinventions of the wheel and in raising the question of how we
select one theory over another of similar descriptive power -- the
problem of notational variants. I personally do not want to solve all
these problems by myself. For this reason, you will find the
documentation to be written in an informal style and filled with
invitations for you to write me with your ideas.
1.5 Fonol History
Fonol 1.0 was written in Microsoft's MBasic 5.2 under CP/M in
1983 while I was employed in the Linguistics Department at the
Universidade Estadual de Campinas. A paper on it ('A Phonological Rule
Interpreter for Microcomputers') was eventually published in 1985 in
the Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference of the
Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing ["Computers in
Literary and Linguistic Computing", Slatkine Reprints, Rue des
Chaudronniers, 5 - Case 765, CH-1211 Geneve 3, Switzerland].
Intermediate versions through 3.0._ were written in my spare time
after work while I was employed in the Human Factors Technology Group
at General Dynamics-Fort Worth. There was a hiatus of three years
between version 3.0._ and 3.1.0 due to lack of interest. This dearth
of stimulus was broken in late 1990 by Dr. Wayne Redenbarger -- to
whom much appreciation! Recent versions from 3.1.0 to 4.2.0 were
funded in part by Aetna Insurance and the Social Security
Administration, I suppose, since they've been written while I've been
on disability leave and under treatment for colon cancer. The present
version is written in Borland's Turbo Pascal 4.0 syntax under MS-DOS
but compiled with the version 6 compiler.
The name 'Fonol' was chosen for similarities to Cobol, Snobol,
Algol, etc. and because, since I was teaching in Brazil at the time,
it seemed like a good abbreviation of 'Linguagem de Programa‡„o
Fonol¢gica'. I forgot that some people don't speak Portuguese.
[Note: remainder elided for brevity]